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Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.

— Norman Mailer Ancient Evenings (1983)

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More quotes by Norman Mailer

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one.

Interview in Writers at Work Third Series (1967)

We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art.

Cannibals and Christians (1966)

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977)

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

All Norman Mailer quotes →

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A portion of life, every moment gets torn out of me hurting, and flees away.

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Knowledge by suffering entereth,
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If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?

Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower (1993)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Norman Mailer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.